Video: Customizing the background of the slideshow

Since we've already customized the layout, and also turned on the icon to show the guides, let's close the Layout panel, because we don't really need that. Here, we can continue to customize the layout by simply clicking and dragging on those guides now that they are visible. Well, what I want to do here is I want to display this with a little bit of a cast shadow. In order to do that, we need to jump down the Backdrop panel. And in the Backdrop, you can currently see that there's a color wash, which is covering over the backdrop. In this case, it's black. Well, we can change this, and we can also change the background image and the background color.

Customizing the background of the slideshow

Since we've already customized the layout, and also turned on the icon to showthe guides, let's close the Layout panel, because we don't really need that.Here, we can continue to customize the layout by simply clicking and dragging onthose guides now that they are visible.Well, what I want to do here is I want to display this with a little bit of a cast shadow.In order to do that, we need to jump down the Backdrop panel.And in the Backdrop, you can currently see that there's a color wash, which iscovering over the backdrop.In this case, it's black.Well, we can change this, and we can also change the background image andthe background color.

Well, let's explore how we can make some changes here.First, let's click off Color Wash.Next, let's go to Background Color.Well, in background color, I'll click on the Color chip, and then I'll choose adifferent color, let's say something like this, a light gray.Next, we'll go ahead and close this option.Now once I do that, I can see that I have a nice, even, light gray.Well, if I want to change the shadow, what I can do is control the Opacity of the shadow.We can see that we can make that shadow darker.We can also control the offset or the radius, and this is going to be theoverall size of it and then the angle as well.

You can modify the angle either by using the slider or by clicking on thelittle Angle wheel.And the nice thing about this is that we can dial in the exact shadow that we're going for.And we can take these and modify these controls here so that it looks best withthis particular photograph.And a lot of times what you'll want to do is just to experiment until youget this just right.All right, well back to the Backdrop settings. How do these work?Well, Color Wash is kind of interesting.Let's turn that on, and let's go ahead and choose a color here.In order to choose a color, I'm going to brighten this up and then select asolid color so that we can kind of see what's happening with this.

Here, I'll try to choose something that's nice and bright and red.And then close this.And I'm doing this really to deconstruct what we have going here.Here is with less of a color wash, and then let's incrementally bring this up.You can see it brings in more and more color.You also notice that we have an angle.Here we can control if this is going from left to right, or top to bottom, or fromone corner to another.We can modify this in order to create a little bit of a visual interest.And sometimes it's fun to have a bit of a darker effect coming from the bottomof the photograph moving up.

We can either have this with a color, as we have here, or we can simply choosesomething like black, so that we have a darker edge near the bottom of the frameand then something brighter at the top.Sometimes it's fun to explore how different background colors might appear here.Here I have a brighter color where it goes from white down to a darker color.We also can, of course, turn this off.All right, well, what about Background Image?Well, with Background Image what you can do is select one of your files.And many times what you want to do is look for an image which is pretty neutral,not a lot of detail in it.

It can kind of serve as a backdrop for a lot of the images.I'm going to try this photograph here.To add that, I'll simply click and drag it on the background area, or click anddrag it into this square here.Now once we do that, we can see that there in the background.Let's choose another image on top of the slideshow, so that we can see how this will appear.Well, what you can do is lower the Opacity.And if you want a brighter Background Image what you'll do is choose white asyour Background Color.Let's choose a bright white.You can see how that's nice and bright.

If you prefer to have this a bit darker, we'll just have black underneath thatso that when it fades out, it's going to fade out to a darker color.One of the fun things that you can do here is obviously modify the waythe slideshow works.In this case, let's move our slideshow images off to the right, and then we cancontrol how this looks.And here, I'll just increase the Opacity just a bit there and then change theBackground Color to white.Now this isn't perfect slideshow design, but what we can see is that we canreally customize the way this slideshow appears.Now if ever you want to change that background image, if you find an image thatyou think might work better, well, simply click on it and then drag it into that area.

And here you'll discover that we have a completely different background.As we do that we can then control the opacity of this or the overall strength ofthat photograph or background color that it then fades off to.All right, well, let's continue to take a look at how we can further modify thisslideshow, and let's do that in the next movie.

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